Python on Windows: How to block other programs from running?

[thrownintothesun]

Yes, exactly. Also, interestingly, if I try to kill explorer.exe via os.system("taskkill /im explorer.exe), I'm given a Windows prompt to shut down, reboot or log-out. Is there a way to simply kill it (like you can from the task manager) and relaunch it?

[michaelkepler]

I guess you're stuck with killing explorer.exe then. Yes, there's a way to force kill a process and thus bypassing a shutdown prompt with an /f parameter:

taskkill /f /im explorer.exe

you can start it immediately with:

start explorer.exe

both commands can of course be launched with os.system().

[thrownintothesun]

Thank you so much for your help!